Has Physics Theory Become Vacuous?

How Vacuous Is Vacuous?

Model-checking gained wide popularity for analyzing software and hardware systems. However, even when the desired property holds, the property or the model may still require fixing. For example, a property φ: “on all paths, a request is followed by an acknowledgment”, may hold because no requests have been generated. Vacuity detection has been proposed to address the above problem. This techniq...

Grounded theory methodology - has it become a movement?

There is an ongoing debate regarding the nature of grounded theory, and an examination of many studies claiming to follow grounded theory indicates a wide range of approaches. In 1967 Glaser and Strauss's ''The Discovery of Grounded Theory; Strategies for Qualitative Research'' was published and represented a breakthrough in qualitative research ; it offered methodological consensus and systema...

Undiminished Praise of a Vacuous Theory

The CAPM is still considered a first-order intellectual achievement, in spite of the current thought leaders also describing it as being “empirically vacuous” (Fama and French, 2006) or that “having a low, middle or high beta does not matter; the expected return is the same” (Ross, 1993).1 In­ deed, I would say the situation is worse, as volatility and beta are generally negatively correlated w...

Reasoning has become a luxury

It is being talked about all over the world; an editorial in the Economist of 19 October 2013 entitled " How Science Goes Wrong " reports a dramatic decline in the quality of scientific publications. Research has changed the world, now it needs to change itself, the subheading reads. The detailed report is based on facts which are difficult to disprove; an example being a Harvard biologist, Joh...

Has screening mammography become obsolete?